538 ALISMA. [CI-ASS VI. ORDER V. 



/S. repens. Smaller, with creeping runners. Scapes mostly single 

 flowered. 



English Botany, t. 2722.— Hooker, British Flora, vol. i. p. 176.— 

 A. repens. — English Flora, vol. ii. p. 205, (but considers it a variety 

 p. 206), — Lindley, Synopsis, p. 253. 



Root of numerous long mostly simple fibres. Leaves all radical, 

 small, lanceolate, or linear lanceolate, on long stout footstalks, dilated 

 at the base, channeled on the upper side, soft, spongy, quite smooth, 

 very variable in length, together with the stem, which is sometimes not 

 more than an inch, and at others twelve inches or more high, round, 

 smooth, erect, rather slender, terminating in a simple umbel of nume- 

 rous flowers, and not unfrequently there is another umbel elevated on 

 a lateral stalk above the other. Peduncles mostly long, slender, erect, 

 and all about the same length, each bearing a solitary flower ; in the 

 variety repens it appears as though the flowering stem had from some 

 cause or other become procumbent, and that the umbel from its base 

 puts out fibrous roots, and in the place of the rays of the umbel bearing 

 flowers, some of them are degenerated into leaves, and mostly there is 

 one or several of them bearing a flower, not formed into an umbel, but 

 only a solitary flower, as in the normal state. Flowers numerous, 

 white, or pinkish yellow at the base. Calyx of the spreading roundish 

 ovate pieces, the corolla of three petals, roundish, with a short claw, 

 uneven on the margin, and finely veined. Capsules numerous, crowded 

 into a globose head, each capsule oblige, compressed, acute at each 

 end, five ribbed, single seeded. 



Habitat. — Marshes, bogs, and ditches; not unfrequent in England, 

 Scotland, and Ireland. /3. repens in North Wales, and ditches at the 

 Murrow of Wicklow, Ireland. 



Perennial ; flowering in August and September. 



3. A. na'tans, Linn. (Fig. 614.) Floating Water Plantain. Flowers 

 solitary, on a slender peduncle ; leaves of the stem ovate or oblong, 

 obtuse, those of the root linear, sessile ; stem thread-shaped, floating, 

 rooting; capsules from six to twelve, oblong, curved, beaked, nume- 

 rously striated. 



English Botany, t. 775. — English Flora, vol. ii. p. 294. — Hooker, 

 British Flora, vol. i. p. 175. — Lindley, Synopsis, p. 253. 



Root of numerous long fibres, bearing numerous tapering lanceolate 

 thin membranous pale striated scales, or abortive leaves, always be- 

 neath the water. Stems mostly several, slender, thread- shaped, from 

 three to ten or twelve feet long, floating, and putting out at various 

 intervals tufts of leaves and several flowers, and mostly long radicals, 

 which attach themselves to the ground or float in the water. Leaves 

 ovate or ovate-oblong, acute at the point and base, about an inch long, 

 on long slender footstalks, arising from the base of a pale thin mem- 

 branous ovate concave stipule. Flowers two or three from each joint, 

 solitary, on slender simple peduncles, larger than the two last species. 



